The Mysterious Ways of God (Rom. 9:24-29)
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One of my favorite hymns in our hymnbook is the one by William Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”
It is one of the glories of the Christian faith that this is the way God reveals himself to us. I am thankful for a mysterious God, for a God who is totally understandable by finite minds would not be God at all but just another idol. And yet, he has revealed himself to us in his word. God is mysterious but he is not unknowable because he has spoken in his word.
We see in this passage both the mystery of God and the making known of God. And we see both of these features in the way the apostle Paul quotes and applies the Scriptures in order to make his point. As we’ve already noted, Paul doesn’t defend God’s right to choose whomever he pleases to be saved on the basis of philosophy and reason. What does he do? He appeals, again and again, to Scripture. He does this more in chapter 9 than any other chapter so far. He quotes six OT passages (Gen. 21:12; 18:10, 14; Gen. 25:23; Mal. 1:2,3; Exod. 33:19; 9:16) in the previous verses. In the text we are considering this morning, he quotes Hos. 2:23; 1:10, and Isa. 10:22,23 and 1:9. In other words, Paul wants his readers to understand that this understanding of who God is and how he saves is not based on his own reason but on the revelation that God has given of himself in Scripture.
Remember that Paul in verse 24 speaks of God’s sovereign and effective call to salvation, a call that is rooted in an unconditional choice on God’s part to save whom he will, and applies it to the Gentiles. This is a new turn of events, for up to this point he has been proving how it is that “they are not all Israel which are of Israel” (6). In other words, he has been at pains to show how it is that God’s election is what distinguishes between Jews that are saved and Jews that are not. But now the apostle says this is also the reason why Gentiles are now being brought into the church and why it is the Gentile rather than the Jew who is primarily filling the ranks of God’s new people in Christ. Gentiles are among the “vessels of mercy” that are “prepared beforehand for glory” by God (23). Election is not just for Jews, but for Gentiles as well. God’s purpose of election is a purpose to save some among every kindred, nation, tribe, and language. All that Paul has said before applies to all who are called by God to salvation, no matter what their heritage. This is important because the gospel is going out to all the nations, and the church includes both Jew and Gentile. And though it is true that the gospel is a gospel to the Jew first, it is also a gospel to the Greek (1:16). Paul not only has to explain why many Jews are lost; he also has to explain why so many Gentiles are being saved. That is what he is doing here. The apostle speaks first to the Gentiles (25-26), and then back to the Jews (27-29).
As we work our way through this passage and we look at God’s ways with both Jew and Gentile, I want us to see four amazing and wonderful and faithful-building things about how God reveals himself to us in the Scriptures. I want you to see God’s ways as surprising, same, sovereign, and saving.
God’s ways are surprising (so don’t prejudge him!)
When I say that God’s ways are surprising, I’m saying what Cowper was saying in the hymn. He moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. Let’s see how this works out in Romans 9:24-29.
First of all, God’s ways are surprising with respect to the Gentiles. One of the interesting things about these verses is that Paul quotes from the book of the Old Testament minor prophet Hosea: “I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved” (25, a quote from Hos. 2:23). What follows is a quote from Hos. 1:10: “And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God” (26). When Hosea wrote these words, he was writing them to and about the northern nation of Israel, which had apostatized from the true faith and were worshipping false gods.
God had called Hosea to a very difficult task. In order to be a parable to the nation of Israel, God told Hosea to marry a prostitute who would bear children from adulterous relationships, just as Israel had abandoned faithfulness to God to go after foreign gods. Their names indicate as much. Gomer, Hosea’s wife, had three children: Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah, and Lo-ammi. The last two names mean “not my loved one” and “not my people,” respectively. They were probably not Hosea’s children. But instead of letting Gomer go (who had also run off and abandoned Hosea), God tells Hosea to get her back and to show her mercy. And her children then become “my loved one” and “my people.” Even so, God is saying through Hosea, he will one day welcome back these wayward people into his family.
The surprising thing is that Paul applies all this to Gentiles, as the connection between verses 24 and 25 makes clear. But that does not make the application questionable. The apostle is simply taking a principle and applying it to a similar situation. Just as Israel’s idolatry put them in the category of those who were no longer God’s people, even so the Gentiles did not belong to the people of God (cf. Eph. 2:11-22). Nevertheless, many Gentiles were being called by God in his sovereign mercy to become the people of God.
In the twenty-first century, it is often easy for us to forget just how wonderful and surprising this blessing is. God never had to include the Gentiles in his plan of salvation. It is his sovereign mercy that brought us into the fold of God’s family. It is God’s doing, not ours. It was God who sent Peter to Cornelius, a Gentile, sent the Spirit so they would believe, and introduced Gentiles into the church (Acts 10). When those who were scattered abroad as a result of persecution preached to Gentiles, we are told that “the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord” (Acts 11:21). And when Paul first went to Europe, it was because “the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them” (Acts 16:10). And the first convert in Europe, Lydia, was converted because God opened her heart to attend to the things preached by Paul (Acts 16:14). In other words, at every turn we are reminded that God was the one who brought Gentiles into the family of God. He sends the Spirit, he attends with power the word preached, and he opens hearts. We who are Gentiles have God’s eternal purpose to thank for our inclusion into the people of God.
Second, God’s ways are surprising with respect to the Jews. I think most Jews would have just assumed that God would continue with the nation of Israel as the conduit through which he would save the world, and that a corollary of this meant that Jews in general could be sure of their salvation. Sure, some Jews might forfeit this privilege, so the thinking went, but for the most part Jews could be certain of a place at the table of God’s eternal feast.
However, as Paul goes on to show in verses 27-29, God was not preserving the nation as such but only a remnant in the nation. Whereas Gentiles were pouring into the church, for the most part all that is left of the Jewish people was a remnant. In these verses the apostle quotes Isaiah, where the emphasis here is on two realities: first, that a small number of the Israelites are being saved, and second, that God is the one who ultimately is responsible for this state of affairs.
As for the first reality, Paul refers to those who are saved as only “a remnant” in contrast to the total number of the children of Israel (“as the sand of the sea”) in verse 27, and then in verse 29, he refers to them as “a seed.” So the fact that so many Israelites had rejected the gospel and so lost was not something that took God by surprise. It was part of his plan to save a remnant. And as William Hendriksen points out, Paul is not spiritualizing this text when he applies it to the eternal salvation of some Jews over others. For, “a close look at Isaiah’s own prophesy shows that he by no means restricts this prophesy to a physical return from captivity, but states that the remnant will return ‘to the mighty God’ (Isa. 10:21). They will lean on Jehovah, will rely on the Lord (verse 20). Paul is therefore exactly reproducing Isaiah’s thought when he says that of the total number of Israelites only the remnant will be saved.”
Nevertheless, this was surprising, and not at all expected. Now, we need to remember this. We need to remember that we cannot figure all of God’s ways out. We cannot always know ahead of time the way he will fulfill his word. We know that God will not change. We know that all his promises will come to pass. But what we can’t know is the exact way that he is going to do this. We need to be careful that we don’t prejudge God by what we can see. We can’t see very far, can we? God sees the end from the beginning. God knows what he is doing and what he is doing is to work all things for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28). God surprises us again and again. He takes the bad things in our lives and works them for good. His discipline in our lives is for our good. When we are weak then we are strong! At other times, when we think things are going just fine and we don’t want them to change, God upturns everything! King David had this experience: “And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong” (Ps. 30:6-7), and then: “thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled” (7). But even this was for David’s good: “I cried to thee, O Lord; and unto the Lord I made supplication. . . . Hear, O Lord, and have mercy upon me: Lord, be thou my helper. Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness” (8, 10-11).
Imagine that you are a Jewish Christian in the first century. For centuries your people were the guardians of the truth in a pagan world. Now by and large your people are rejecting God’s word and God’s Messiah. That must have been depressing! It certainly moved Paul to tears and utter heartbreak. But we can see that God was at work then, bringing about his sovereign plan. He was not defeated then, and he is not defeated now. Two thousand years later and God’s church marches on. God was not defeated when the Barbarians conquered Rome in the fifth century, when Islam conquered Northern Africa in the seventh, or when communism spread its tentacles throughout the world in the 20th century. God is not defeated in a new godlessness in the West that is militant in ways that it was not (and could not be) in the past. When Buyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress in 17th century Britain, he could make his character Christian pass by the giants Pope and Pagan unharmed because they were old and fat and unable to do little more than grin at Christian as he passed by. But there is a resurgent paganism and a resurgent Roman Catholicism in our day. The dangers are increasing. But let us not be discouraged. Let us remember God’s surprising providence and put our hope in him.
God’s ways are the same (so don’t give up on him!)
This may seem like a contradiction to the previous point, but there is both a surprisingness and a sameness to God’s ways. In some sense, this should not take us off guard because of who God is. He is unchanging in his nature and attributes, so of course God’s ways in the past are going to be reflected in the future. But God is not like us; he does not think like us, and therefore we should expect to be surprised by the way he brings his purpose about.
We can see the sameness of God’s ways in this passage in the prophecies quoted. Both have to do with God’s ways with OT Judah and Israel. Paul takes the Hosea passages, which initially were meant to be fulfilled in the northern tribes of Israel, and applies them to the Gentiles. Paul can do this because the way God dealt with Israel in the past applies exactly to his dealings with the Gentiles in the present. Israel had revolted from God through idolatry, but God promised to bring them back into the fold. In the same way, God was taking the Gentiles, people who were the objects of God’s promise to Abraham (“in thee shall all the nations be blessed”), but who were not part of his people and hadn’t been because of their idolatry, and now bringing them, as impossible as it seemed, into the people of God.
And he applies the Isaiah passage, which initially applied to Judah under the Assyrian threat, to Israel in his day. How can Paul do this? Because the principles in each passage are principles which are rooted in God’s unchanging character. Seen from that point of view, it is not surprising that God is doing what he is doing, for it is simply an extension of God’s way of working in the past into the present.
My friends, let’s not forget that our God is unchanging. He is utterly unchangeable in his essence, in his character, and in his purposes. The God of the Bible is our God. The God who made the heavens and the earth by the word of his power, who upholds all things by that same world, who rules over all, is our God. The God who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us through the Holy Spirit. In fact, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is operative in every Christian (cf. Eph. 1:19-20; 3:20-21)! We must not read the Bible as if we were reading something that has no relevance to our lives. Don’t relate to God as if he is only a proposition to be believed. He is someone who acts on the behalf of all who put their trust in him. Do you believe that? Do you believe that God is real? Do you believe, as it says in Hebrews, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever?” Do you believe that God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that you could ask or think? Do you believe that God hears your prayers, save sinners, provides for our needs, protects us and guides us and blesses us? Do you walk with God? Do you know this God? Rejoice in the surprising sameness of God!
God’s ways are sovereign (so trust in him and submit to him!)
Of course we’ve seen God’s sovereignty all throughout this passage in Romans 9. It’s no different here. One of the realities especially in verses 28-29 is that God is the one who is doing all this. Verse 28, though it is difficult, yet the overall idea is that God is fulfilling his purpose in this state of affairs, and he is doing it speedily and thoroughly: “for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay” (ESV). The thought behind these verses is that God has not been defeated in the overall apostasy of Israel; rather, he is fulfilling his purposes even in this. God’s purpose of election is not to be judged by the numbers of those who embrace the faith, for it is his purpose to save a remnant, a small seed.
You see the emphasis upon the action of God also in verse 29. Who is it that leaves a seed, an offspring? It is the Lord of hosts. And it is he that keeps the apostasy from being complete: for, “Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodom, and been made like unto Gomorrah.” In other words, not only is God not being unfaithful to his promises: he is actually carrying them out as the Gentiles pour into the church and Israel is rejecting the gospel. And the ultimate explanation for all of this is the fact that God is sovereign in salvation.
Now we should be encouraged by this. For there is a principle here that ought to strengthen us. Sodom and Gomorrah are represented in Scripture as a picture of ultimate rebellion against God and wickedness as well as a picture of God’s final judgment upon the wicked (see esp. Mt. 10:15; 11:23,24; 2 Pet. 2:6; Jude 7). Today we are surrounded by a weakened and frightened church and an emboldened world hostile to God’s people. We are confronted with high profile professing Christians who deny the faith and de-convert, many times very publicly. We are living, as it were, in a reincarnated Sodom and Gomorrah. The apostasy is all around us. And it is very easy – I speak from experience – to get depressed when we see everything getting worse and worse. It is easy for us to have the attitude of Elijah, who complained that he was the only faithful person left in Israel.
But we need to encourage ourselves by the fact that even in the midst of what looks to us as the crumbling of God’s plans, in fact God is actually carrying out his plans. Paul looked around and saw so many of his fellow Jews rejecting the gospel. That had to be very hard. How many synagogues had he been thrown out of? How many times had he been rejected and beaten and scoffed and scorned by his own people? And yet Paul didn’t give up. Why? Because he had confidence that God always in all times is successfully working out his plans, even when we can’t see it. He will save his elect. And in fact, if it were not for his election, we would all be lost. The fact that there is still a church is proof that God is still working, still calling his people home.
My friends, the wicked do not have the final word. The Ahabs and Jezabels may appear powerful, and they may lead many away from the true faith. But God has those whom he has reserved for himself, even though it be a remnant. People often talk about this or that side of history. My friend, there is only one side of history and that is God’s side. Trust in God. He is working out his eternal purposes even when we cannot see how any of this will turn out for good. We have no reason to fear. We have no reason to worry. And though hard times may be ahead for the people of God, it is not because the reins of history have gotten out of his hands. He is in control and we can rest in that. And God’s people will be saved. Not one shall be lost. And if you belong to Christ, that means you. You are in his hands, and therefore most secure!
God’s ways are saving (so come to him through Christ!)
I think it is worthwhile to consider the terms by which God’s ways here are described. God is doing all of this to bring about the manifestation of his grace and mercy in the salvation of Jew and Gentile. And we must always remember that salvation is not just being saved from hell. It means being included in the family of God with all its privileges. Those who are saved are called by God “my people.” And this is not merely a name for those who are set aside for historical tasks, but who are incorporated into the family of God forever. Look back at verse 23: the vessels of mercy are prepared for glory. “Glory” in Paul is not a reference to some kind of special historical task, but to eternal blessing. We are not to interpret the people of God here merely in terms of being God’s people in this world. This means to belong to God forever as his children. The apostle Peter quotes this verse as well, and applies it to his readers in terms of salvation: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.” (1 Pet. 2:9-10).
So Paul says that Gentiles who are called to faith in Christ are part of the people of God. More than that, he says that they are “beloved.” To be the people of God means that we are loved by him. It is why the apostle John wrote, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:1, 2).
I think a lot of our problems stem from the fact that we forget who we are. If you believe in Christ, it is because you have been called by God to belong to his family and to be embraced in his eternal love. There is nothing more secure than that. There is no greater blessing than that. Let the people of this world seek security in the things of this world; let them seek their comforts there. It is nothing compared to what is laid up for the people of God and what even now we are beginning to enjoy. Knowing this rightly would be the sovereign cure for worry and dissatisfaction. May we live in the light of the reality of these verses!
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